Martin Jackson — your intelligent automation partner

The £14 Trillion Reality Check: Why Karpathy’s AGI Warning is Pure Gold for SMEs

Martin Jackson
Martin Jackson
Man with short hair in a comic pop art style sits on a chair, speaking into a Shure microphone and gesturing. The phrase '...ten years away...' appears in the image.

Here’s the deal…

Andrej Karpathy just dropped a reality bomb that should make every SME owner sit up and pay bloody attention. The bloke who helped build Tesla’s AI and co-founded OpenAI? He’s saying AGI is still a decade away – not this “year of agents” bollocks everyone’s been peddling.

And get this… tech valuations have shot up by £14 trillion since ChatGPT launched. All built on the fantasy that AI would magically automate everything overnight.

Karpathy’s basically saying: “Slow down, cowboys.”

The hype train’s gone mental

Polygonal geometric bridge in blue, yellow, orange, and red, cracked and breaking with debris falling.

While Silicon Valley’s having a proper meltdown about AGI timelines, they’re missing what’s happening in the real world. Karpathy’s laid out exactly why current AI is still pretty rubbish:

  • Reinforcement learning is “terrible” – it rewards lucky guesses instead of actual thinking
  • Coding agents are pants – they struggle with custom stuff and make everything unnecessarily complicated
  • LLMs can’t think strategically – they memorise everything but can’t make proper business decisions
  • Getting reliable AI is mental hard – going from 90% to 99% accuracy? Good luck with that

Your competitors are still using spreadsheets (seriously)

Here’s what the tech giants don’t want you to know: while they’re chasing perfect AI systems, most of your competitors are still drowning in manual processes .

They’re sitting there waiting for the “perfect” solution while you could be implementing practical automation that actually works.

I’ve seen this movie before, dude. Back in the late ’90s, while our competitors were debating whether this “internet thing” was a fad, we were already building websites and doing email marketing. Early movers win big.

The “march of nines” thing Karpathy talks about? Going from 90% to 99% reliability? That’s exactly where SMEs have a massive advantage. You don’t need 99.9% perfect AI. You just need systems that are better than your current manual chaos .

Three lessons that’ll make you money

Person standing in front of a geometric, checkerboard pop art background in blue, red, and yellow with the text 'Human Experience Outshines Data'.

  1. Stop waiting for perfect – start winning with “good enough”

While everyone else waits for AGI, you can implement automation that delivers immediate ROI. I built my first AI system in 2021 – was it perfect? Hell no! It would work brilliantly for weeks, then mysteriously crash and we’d spend hours figuring out what went wrong. But it was still way better than manual data entry .

  1. Focus on augmented intelligence, not replacement

Karpathy’s spot on here. For the next decade, it’s about AI enhancing human decisions, not replacing them. Perfect for SMEs who need systems that help them think better, not think for them.

  1. Your business experience beats AI’s perfect memory

Here’s the kicker – Karpathy says AI’s “perfect memory” is actually a problem. It can’t forget the irrelevant stuff like humans do. Your 10, 20, 30 years of business experience? That’s your competitive advantage right there.

The bottom line

Neon geometric shapes, including stairs, triangles, and blocks, float and glow in outer space with the text 'Good Enough Wins'.

While £14 trillion in tech valuations chase the AGI dream, your biggest opportunity is happening right now . Your competitors are using spreadsheets, waiting for perfect AI solutions that might be years away.

The question isn’t whether AGI arrives in 2025 or 2035. The question is: while everyone else waits for perfect, will you implement practical automation that transforms your business today?

I’ve been building AI systems since 2021 – back when they were proper mental. Trust me, “good enough” automation that works beats perfect systems that don’t exist.

Ready to stop waiting and start winning? Book a free AI Discovery Call to identify your biggest automation opportunities while your competitors are still debating timelines.

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AI Disclaimer: Because Apparently We Need One Now

Right, let’s get this out of the way before someone has a proper meltdown…

Yes, I use AI. Shocking, I know. An AI automation specialist using AI – it’s almost like a chef using knives or a plumber using spanners. Mental, isn’t it?

Here’s the thing – I’ve never pretended to be Picasso. I can barely draw a decent stick figure, and my artistic education peaked at colouring inside the lines (which I was rubbish at). So when it comes to creating visuals or researching content, AI is bloody brilliant at doing the heavy lifting.

But here’s what AI can’t do – it can’t replicate 30+ years of getting my hands dirty in real businesses. It can’t copy the scars from watching “simple integrations” turn into six-month nightmares. And it definitely can’t swear like a proper Brit who’s spent decades dealing with systems that mysteriously decide important data fields mean something completely different.

The EU’s Having a Field Day (Naturally)

Speaking of overreactions, the EU’s now mandating AI content labels because apparently they’d regulate the opening of a crisp packet if they could. Their new AI Act requires everything to be marked, watermarked, and probably stamped in triplicate.

Meanwhile, the UK’s taking a more sensible approach – “use your judgement, don’t be a pillock about it.” Refreshing, really.

But here’s the kicker: research shows that slapping “AI MADE THIS” labels on everything actually makes people trust it less – even when the content is identical quality. It’s like putting a “CONTAINS CHEMICALS” sticker on water. Technically true, completely mental.

Remember When Social Media Was “Just a Fad”?

This whole AI panic reminds me of those highly respected business experts who dismissed social media as a passing trend back in 2006. You know the ones – sitting in boardrooms saying “Facebook is just for university kids” while their junior staff begged them to pay attention.

Those same companies spent years trying to catch up after realizing they’d missed the boat entirely. By the time they finally joined Facebook in 2011, their competitors had built communities, refined strategies, and owned the conversation.

Here’s the scary bit: AI adoption is happening three times faster than social media did. We’re already seeing the same pattern – 5% of companies are crushing it with AI while 95% are still “evaluating options” and “waiting to see how it develops.”

Guess which group my clients want to be in?

My Process is Simple:

  1. AI helps me research and draft the boring bits.
  2. I add the personality, experience, and occasional profanity.
  3. I make sure it actually makes sense for real businesses.
  4. I take full responsibility for everything published.

The Reality Check

To those clutching their pearls about AI assistance: get over it. We’re not going back to typewriters and encyclopaedias. The future belongs to people who embrace tools that make them more effective, not those hiding behind “authentic struggle.”

Besides, if you think AI came up with my stories about early automation systems going mental and mixing up data fields… well, you’ve clearly never worked with AI long enough to know it’s nowhere near that creative (or sweary).

TLDR: AI helps, humans create, everyone wins. Now can we get back to actually helping businesses instead of arguing about tools?

P.S. – If you’re still bothered by this, you’re probably not my target audience anyway. My clients care about results, not whether I used a calculator or did the maths by hand. And they definitely don’t need the EU telling them how to label their content like it’s a tin of beans.

P.P.S. – Those “experts” who missed social media? They’re probably the same ones telling you to “wait and see” with AI. How’d that work out last time?

All insights are based on publicly available information and my 30+ years of business technology experience, including building AI systems since 2021. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be professional or legal advice.

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